3. Why learn C?

C is a standard. It is the programmers programming language.
It is the standard programming language of GNU and BSD based systems.
The majority of these systems and the applications that run on them,
is written in C. C was developed over thirty years ago for writing
operating systems and applications. It's small, extensible design has
allowed it to evolve with the computer industry. Because of it's age
and popularity, C is a very well supported language. Many tools exist
to make C programming easier and these tools are often very mature and
of a high standard. All the software we will use in this book is
written in C.